The Eye Which is Characteristic

I wasn’t born yesterday.
I arrived four decades ago with brilliance
beckoning on my tongue. Precociousness
breathing through my limbs
like a million heartbeats.
Long after midnight, my eyes were still open.

For many, the world is only the hungry feeding
the starving. When I say skyward, people
find it dangerous and pass on the street
eyes cast down. Another memory to fold neatly
atop the last, sidewalk cracks and fallen leaves.
Landscapes as far as the tip of each shoe.

A man in a trench coat on a mid-summer day,
stands on the corner of Country Club Avenue
and Mesa Drive, playing air guitar. Two hundred
vehicles pass him by. He doesn’t know he’s alone.
Everything is the opposite. When he says we,
perhaps he’s thinking of the stars.